Mom Tells Another Parent The Reason Their Daughters Aren't Friends Anymore Is 'Due To Intelligence Levels'
She implied that the other parent's child wasn't as smart as her daughter.
Trinity Kubassek from Pexels via Canva Pro A mom was accused of alluding to another parent's child being "dumb" after explaining the reason why their kids aren't friends anymore.
Posting to the subreddit "r/AITA," a woman shared that her daughter, Sophie, used to be friends with another girl named Kat, and after their friendship ended, she tried to explain to Kat's mother why the two girls weren't close anymore.
She told another mother that the reason their daughters aren't friends anymore is due to their different 'intelligence levels.'
In her Reddit post, she explained that Sophie and Kat used to be extremely close during their elementary school years but ever since moving up to middle school, the two young girls have drifted apart. It's mostly because the school splits its students up into gifted programs and non-gifted programs for math and science.
"All other classes are still together. My daughter got placed in the advance and Kat got placed in normal. No big deal they still see each other in school. They were still close friends until group projects," she wrote, referring to the multiple group projects in the girl's classes, adding that the students are allowed to pick who they want to work with.
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Usually, Kat and Sophie work together, which is where the issues first began. Sophie's mom noticed that her daughter would get frustrated when Kat wasn't doing the work correctly. She told her daughter to just turn it in without fixing any of the mistakes, and her daughter ended up getting a bad grade on the assignment.
"After that Sophie went through a period of time fixing stuff. After a while, I told her to stop doing group projects with her. So they stopped doing projects together and the friendship blew up."
Now, the two girls aren't friends anymore, and when Sophie's birthday came around, Kat wasn't included on the invitation list. Sophie's mother eventually received a call from Kat's mother, asking why her daughter wasn't invited to the party. Sophie's mother told her that their daughters weren't friends anymore, but Kat's mother argued that Kat should still be invited because it wasn't that serious.
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"I told her the people invited were people my daughter wanted at the event," Sophie's mother explained to Kat's mom. "This went [on] for a while and came to why they weren’t friends anymore and I said it was due to both girls' intelligence levels, and tried explaining the group project issue."
Hearing this, Kat's mother immediately got upset, believing that her daughter was being accused of not being smart, which Sophie's mother clarified in the Reddit post she never intentionally said, but the implication was still there.
In the comments section, a majority of people agreed that she was out of line for saying that to the girl's mother.
"You are likely smart enough to know that while you didn't call her dumb, you said everything but. Why did you say that, I wonder," one Reddit user wrote. "You could have just said the friends fell out over school projects. Be wary of raising a child to believe she's intellectually superior to other kids. Kids like that often fall flat in their 20s when grades are not important anymore."
It's been proven that children who grew up in gifted programs at school were prone to suffer later in life. Often, gifted students become insecure, anxious, depressed, and doubt their intellectual values because of how much pressure was put on them from a young age. The truth of the matter is that every child is gifted and smart, and schools dividing young kids by their intellect levels does nothing but alienate the ones who didn't make it and put an unintended spotlight on the ones who did.
Another user added, "Just because Kat wasn’t placed in the advanced classes doesn’t mean she’s less intelligent than Sophie. There are different types of intelligence. There may be areas in which Kat thrives but Sophie struggles and vice versa. Don’t allow your daughter to look down on others just because she’s doing slightly better academically."
By middle school, parents should let their kids navigate their relationships unless bullying is involved.
The best thing this mother can do is make sure her daughter knows that being in a gifted class at school doesn't mean she's above anyone else, especially Kat.
Parents should also not be interfering in friendship fallouts that their kids may be going through, unless the situation has gotten out of hand or bullying is in play.
People drift apart, that's just life, and down the road, Kat and Sophie could make up but for now, it seems Sophie's mother may owe Kat's mother an apology.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.